John Varley - Red Thunder

Then, on the thirteenth stop, just as Travis was about to boost again, I thought I caught a flicker on the edge of my screen, from the corner of my eye. Could it have been the ship, or a piece of it, drawing the shallowest possible chord through the spherical volume of space we were searching?

“Did anybody else see that?” I asked.

“See what?” Travis bellowed from above.

“I thought there was a flicker,” I said. “Nobody else saw it.”

“Heading! Give me a heading!”

I gave it to him, and instantly the ship started turning to point to it. Then three gees smashed into us again. Dak groaned, and couldn’t get the barf bag to his mouth with arms suddenly turned to lead, but it didn’t matter, he didn’t have anything to bring up.

“I see it again!” I sang out. There it was, flickering… and another, and another.

“Four… no, five blips.”

“I see seven,” Alicia called out.

“It’s the debris field,” Travis shouted down to us. “Now we have to figure out which ones are worthless.”

We wanted to find big chunks, but the biggest might not be the prize we were looking for. It all depended on the size and shape of the explosion, and where people were when it happened. The first three objects we found turned out to be heavy parts of the engine.

“Stands to reason those would be thrown the farthest, right?” Travis said. Nobody responded. “Well, anybody have any better theory?”

“Sounds good to me, Captain,” I said. I was staring at a screen with maybe a hundred twinkling blips, some of them flashing every second or two, some waxing and waning over a period of minutes as they [362] rotated. Red Thunder was drifting through the debris field. It was dangerous to go through it any other way. Already we’d heard two loud clangs as fist-sized hunks of stuff hit us.

After spotting and rejecting a few dozen objects Travis was getting frustrated again. “Can anybody help me out here? Anybody got any ideas? Crazy ideas, stupid ideas, out-of-left-field ideas… any idea at all. I promise I won’t laugh.”

Nobody had one. But I was studying one blip we were slowly moving away from. Actually, I was wondering if it might be more than one blip, connected in some way, from the way the reflection changed. Stupid idea? Well, he asked for it.

“Travis, I’ve got something interesting,” I said, and gave him the position of the triad of blips. Instantly Red Thunder began to rotate again.

“I don’t see it,” Kelly said, softly enough that Travis wouldn’t hear. I moved the cursor over the trio and highlighted it in red. Kelly chewed her lip. “Might be something. Can’t hurt to go look.”

“Bingo!” Travis called out two minutes later. “Manny, come look.”

I unbuckled and floated up to the cockpit. Out the window I could see the object, about three miles away. Actually, three objects of various sizes, all rotating around a common center of gravity. I couldn’t see what was holding them together.

“Wires,” Travis said, reading my mind. “Unless I’m mistaken, two of those- chunks are parts of the living quarters. Those two are worth a look, don’t you think?”

“Sure do.”

“Okay, go below and strap in again, I’m going to get us to about a hundred yards, more or less. Take me about five minutes.”

I knew that was headlong speed in space, where it typically took a VStar several hours to close the last few hundred yards with a space station. I also knew Red Thunder was not famous for fine control. The Squeezer engines were great for raw power, but it was hard to release just enough energy to get you where you’re going without getting yourself into trouble. But once again, I’d bet on Travis.

And because I knew Travis all too well by this time, the first thing I did when I got to the control deck, even before strapping in, was to [363] incite the crew to mutiny. I quickly determined they were all with me, so I strapped in and sat tight.

As soon as we were where Travis wanted us to be, he called out.

“Dak, I flipped a coin and you’re it, in control until I get back.”

“I don’t think so, Captain,” he said. Travis stuck his head down through the access hole and frowned at Dak.

“What’s the problem?”

“This isn’t right, Travis,” I said. “You shouldn’t be going over there.”

“I’ve got more suit hours than-”

“We know that. And if something happened to you, we might as well just open the hatches and suck vacuum,” Dak said. “You’re the only one can fly this thing, probably, and the only one who can land her, for sure.”

“What is this? Are you saying you won’t take control?”

“If you order me to, I will. But we want you to see you shouldn’t give the order.”

“This is what you all think?” He got nods from all four of us. For just a moment I thought he was going to dig in his heels, but then he swung himself down to the control deck and hung there, and rubbed his face with his hands. He was probably feeling as tired as I was, and I was exhausted.

“All right, I’m trapped. I think I’d rather cut off my right arm than send one of you kids out there to handle this… but I guess it’s what I signed up for when I raised ship without a trained copilot aboard. Alicia, you suit up, the sooner the better.”

“Right, Captain,” she said, and started unbuckling.

“Hey, wait a-”

“Sorry, Dak, you asked for it. You’re still far too sick to go, under any circumstances. My intention was to have Alicia go with me. Whatever we decide, Alicia has to go. It’s what she trained for. If anybody’s hurt over there, there’s not much I can do for them. But Alicia can. And because of the buddy system we started this morning, Kelly goes with her.”

Kelly was way ahead of him, already unbuckling. And now it was my turn to squawk. Travis cut me off just as abruptly.

“I probably like it even less than you guys do. My generation, we [364] were taught that it’s always a man who goes into the dangerous situation. You mean to tell me. twenty-first-century men are still over-protective of their women?”

Neither of us had anything to say in our defense. Yes, I did feel protective of Kelly, and Alicia too, for that matter. But Travis had us trapped. It was true, Alicia had to go. It was true, Kelly was the only possible buddy, as Dak and I were still far from sure of our ability to do the job without filling our helmets with vomit, though I was doing a lot better than Dak was by then.

We all followed the girls onto the suit deck. Dak and I helped them get suited up, Travis carefully keeping his back to us. He was putting together a tool kit with some of the things they might need, just a heavy-duty canvas bag with a drawstring.

“For once in my life, I’m not sure I want to be a feminist,” Kelly whispered. “Manny, I’m real scared.”

“Just say the word, and you don’t have to go,” I said, meaning it. I’d fight Travis with my fists, if I had to.

“ You wouldn’t say the word, would you? Be honest.”

“No. No I wouldn’t.”

“And you’d probably be almost as scared as I am.”

“Probably more.”

I noticed that Travis was suiting up, too. He smiled at me.

“Somebody has to go outside to help them with the crossing,” he said, “and I don’t figure that’ll be too dangerous. But I want both of you to suit up, too, all but the helmets, and keep those with you. Should have thought of it before, there’s too much stuff flying around out there, we could get a puncture.”

And with that, the three of them put on their helmets-a last kiss from me to Kelly-and entered the air lock.

Dak and I watched it cycle as we suited up, then hurried up to the cockpit. We got there in time to see the three of them float up to the portholes, tethered together and also tied to a safety line that was attached to one of many hooks welded to Red Thunder’s side for that very purpose.